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War Horse: Out of the Trenches (TM2YC)

TM2YC

TM2YC

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Steven Spielberg's 'War Horse' has really grown in my estimation each time I've watched it. However, I always thought the decision to cutaway from the horse Joey and his story was a big mistake. It felt like the film was constructed to be just about Joey but maybe the film-makers bottled it and decided to put some of the focus back onto his first human owner.

At first I thought I'd just chop out the 10-minute 'Second Battle of the Somme' sequence, which occurs 3/4 of the way through and does not feature Joey. It derails the movie, 10-minutes later you're thinking "Oh yeah, this movie was about a horse wasn't it". Also the 2-minute cutaway back to Albert in England disrupted the otherwise entirely Joey focused narrative. Albert should just be the first of Joey's many owners, although the most important and enduring of these.

Then I thought I'd convert the whole film to black & white and it does look very nice that way but I decided it created a problem with instantly telling the difference between the two horse characters, Joey (dark brown) and Topthorn (black).

Finally I hit upon the idea of shifting the Somme sequence to the start, to form a new flashback/prologue and only this would be in black & white, further separating it visually from the main body of the movie, suggesting something of the past about it and creating a contrast with the vibrant colourful countryside of the first Devon scenes. The fact that the Somme sequence already featured no score, unlike the lushly orchestrated John Williams scenes that follow it, was an bonus distancing factor. We will now not really see Albert again until the end of the film, just a brief glimpse of his face, lit by the guns that Joey is dragging, only telling us that Albert has joined up.

The cutlist at present is:

00.00.00 - Added fanedit.org & TM2YC titles
00.00.28 - Touchstone & Dreamworks titles converted to B&W, plus grain, a little old vinyl crackle and mixed in battle sounds getting louder
00.01.05 - 10-minute 'Second Battle of the Somme' sequence brought forward to form a new flashback/prologue. Converted to B&W, plus I've added a vignette to make the footage look more old fashioned. Trimmed down to 9-minutes by reducing repetition and removing references to specific events we now haven't yet seen. The relationship between the three Devon boys and the mention of a missing horse is all that's needed.
00.02.06 - Removed 38-seconds of dialogue referring to Joey, a car race and a girl, which we now haven't seen yet.
00.02.42 - Removed 10-seconds of dialogue referring to the field being ploughed, which we now haven't seen yet.
00.03.55 - Removed the Sergeant repeating "Understand", Andrew got it and we got it already.
00.04.07 - Removed Albert repeating "Andrew!" and 2-seconds of Andrew continuing to shake his head.
00.07.55 - Removed repetitive 2-second shot of Andrew running, to keep the focus on the grenade.
00.08.51 - Removed 2 repetitive shots, totally 6-seconds, that were not required and arguably muddled the geography of the scene.
00.09.45 - Brought close-up of Albert forward to remove an odd double take from Andrew as the gas bomb explodes. Now it's clearer he doesn't have time to react, rather than choosing not to.
00.09.46 - Removed 4-frames from a long shot were you can see Albert's lips begin to say his next line, before the close-up where we hear/see it.
00.09.51 - Rescored and reworked sound FX across a new dissolve back into where the film originally started. Added bird song, wind sounds etc.
00.10.04 - Added "England - 1912, Devon" on-screen text, made to (hopefully) exactly match the style and placement of the existing "France - 1918, The Somme" text from the 'Second Battle of the Somme' sequence.
00.11.34 - Replaced the golden "WAR HORSE" 1st titlecard with a simpler B&W one in the same font. I just didn't like the look of the original for some reason.
01.13.16 - Removed 2-minute scene of Albert back in Devon getting the Joey letter/drawing in the post. This is Joey's story and the story of the war, so we should not cut away from him and back to peace, plus we know the letter was sent and if we are paying attention to the Somme prologue, we saw that he recieved it too.
01.42.55 - Removed 10-minute 'Second Battle of the Somme' sequence. Rescored and reworked sound FX across a new transition onto Topthorn's exhausted face, dragging the guns.
01.43.10 - Trimmed original crossfade from end of the Somme sequence and moved shot of trudging feet forward 10-seconds.
02.15.26 - Again replaced the golden "WAR HORSE" 2nd titlecard with a simpler B&W one in the same font.
02.15.38 - Reframed all 25 ending titlecards so they are now in the precise middle of the screen and not noticeably vertically off centre. This just irritated me. The titles are also now B&W (rather than off white).
02.17.34 - Scrolling credits converted to simple B&W to match all other titles (rather than off white).

Original Length: 02.26.30
Fanedit Length: 02.23.40

It's a light edit, beyond the restructuring. I cant think of a fanedit title, so any suggestions would be welcome :) .
 
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War Horse: A Story About A Horse. Too obvious?

War Horse: Equine Edition. Too punny?

War Horse: War is Hell for Everyone. Too generic?
 
You want a great title?
Here it comes!
My little Pony goes to War šŸ˜
 
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Hero of The Trenches

I love it that you are editing this movie. It was very good as it was. I know you will make it unforgettable.
 
I had a watch of the edit so far and decided to make a few more minor changes.

There are now on screen chapters titles (in the same style and font as the existing time/place titles), acknowledging the episodic nature of the story and who owns, or cares for Joey:

Part 1 - Albert
Part 2 - Captain Nicholls
Part 3 - Gunther and Michael
Part 4 - Emilie
Part 5 - Private Hengelmann
Part 6 - No man's

I also decided to cut out the reveal that Albert is alive while Joey is being led by Colin through the trenches to the hospital. The first time we meet Albert again, in the finale section, will now be him in a hospital bed asking about the rumour of a miracle horse, just before Joey is about to be shot. I had considered deleting that too, so the first we know of Albert is his whistle to Joey but I thought it was too out of the blue.
 
War Horse is a wonderful movie. I am sure that it will be an amazing edit.
 
'War Horse: Out of the Trenches' is complete and will be on ifdb tomorrow.

Here is The DVD coverart:

warhorse_outofthetrenches_3dview.jpg


and here is a couple of minutes either side of the new transition between the B&W Somme prologue and the original beginning over the movie (which is back into colour):


(Password: fanedit.org)
 
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